Ninja Origins - Chaos Clan Ghost Ninja

The second member of my Chaos Clan, the Ghost Ninja is, as the name suggest a ghostly ninja, summoned by the Mahōtsukai to serve the Chaos Clan. Being undead, he is very hard to kill. Nearly invisible during the day, the Ghost Ninja's unearthly aura will make his skin glow brightly in the dark, making him unsuitable for covert operations. 

Some more info about the parts used after the pictures.

While I prefer the look with the hood down, different configurations are possible, going from all the way up to either top or bottom of the head covered.

And an attempt to show the glow in the dark effect without plunging him into full darkness:

Facing off against a Dragon Clan ninja equipped with ancestral Dragon Claws:

Standing at the side of his master, the powerful Mahōtsukai who brought him back to unlife.

Now for the build. Obviously, the main figure is the Masters of the WWE Universe Undertaker figure, without the armour and halberd. This figure already has a bit of an oriental look about him, with the beard and the hair, so I felt it was a good fit. 

The tunic is a repro vintage Ninjor tunic bought off ebay, with the sticker removed. I prefer to double wrap the ribbons around the  torso and tie them in the front, unlike the proper Ninjor way of tying them in the back.

The accessories are the energy trail parts that come with the Masters of the WWE Universe The Rock figure. They are a perfect colour match for the blue tattoos on the Undertaker's body and in fact look better on him than on The Rock.

Finally, the sword is from a Funko Mortal Kombat Scorpion. I painted the handle black (and varnished) and added some dark blue accents in the same shade as the blue tattoos, to tie it all together.

All in all, while a very simple custom, I think the various parts work amazingly well together to give him a dark, menacing look.

Remco Origins - DC Warlord

One of the things I was inspired to do by the upcoming MotU Origins range was to upgrade vintage knock off figures (preferably beaters) to the Origins buck so that they would look to be part of the same range. The first one to get such treatment is the Remco figure for DC's Warlord character. While a pretty great figure in his own right, I got one that wasn't in stellar condition, so I wouldn't feel too guilty about cutting it up to transfer as much detail as I could to one of the MotWWEU bodies.

I'll start by showing the result, before going into a bit more detail about the creation and parts used.

 

I initially started with the idea to make a direct 1 on 1 copy of the Remco figure, with reuse of the thin plastic cape and the original sword and not much else. It seemed a bit spartan by the time I got to that stage and I didn't like how the original cape looked on the new figure, so I decided to give it an upgrade with a full moulded plastic cape. The comic version of the character had a lot more accessories, including a pistol with holster and a sheathed dagger strapped to his leg. I looked in my spares for some suitable bits and came up with what you see.

The breakdown is as follows:
- MotWWEU Warrior body, with the chest tattoo removed
- Original Remco Warlord head, adapted to the origins neck system (I glued a carved down MotWWEU head inside the hollow, soft plastic Warlord head) and repainted
- Original Remco Warlord loincloth, with the inside adapted to the origins body
- Original Remco Warlord wristguards and boot cuffs, cut from the original figure and hollowed so they would fit over the Origins wrists/boots
- MotWEEU black boots with the laces removed
- Cape from the Funko Savage Age Superman, repainted to match the pattern from the original Warlord cape
- Sword is the original sword for this figure
- Holster and pistol from MOTUC Adora, I cut the holster from the belt, removed detail and glued it back on the other side, so it would sit on the right side. Pistolgrip is a bit small, but this weapon is the closest match I had to the Warlord's pistol
- Spare dagger leg ring comes from a Remco Conan figure
- Dagger is a curved lego sword, that actually fits really well in the hand and looks convincing enough as a curved dagger in this scale

Below a look at the DC comic reference and at the base Remco figure.

Picture before the black spots got a second coat to even out the shade

Ninja Origins - Chaos Clan Mahōtsukai

Another member from a different ninja clan, this one is from Chaos Clan and is a Mahōtsukai, a sorcerer. A skilled practitioner of the dark arts, not in the least the forbidden sorcery of Nekuromanshī, this prominent clan member commands forces that most adversary's will find hard to deal with. A word about parts that were used to make this custom follows after the pictures.

The Chaos Clan sorcerer faces off against a Dragon Clan warrior armed with Dragon Claws. Will these mystic weapons be enough to ward of the energy blasts of the Mahōtsukai?

Now about the creation of the figure. This one came about when I was buying some repro cloth parts on ebay (mostly Prince Adam vests and belts in various colours) and saw the seller had a repro Master Splinter robe from TMNT, among other things. I took a chance that it would be big enough to accommodate an Origins figure, thinking it might go well with the regular Triple H legs. It worked and screamed sorcerer robes to me, so after playing around with some possible bits to match the figure, this concept came about. The addition of the robe and belt adds to the 1980's feel in my opinion.

The breakdown is as follows:
- Head: adapted head from the Funko Mortal Kombat Raiden, with added paintjob. Hollowed out the bottom and glued in an o-ring for the neck peg.
- Torso: Finn Balor torso, with the black bits slightly repainted to match the Raiden head.
- Arms: ring version Cena. I feel the wrist protection looks very much Asian.
- Crotch, legs and feet: regular Triple H, with the logo removed.
- Robe: Reproduction TMNT Master Splinter robe from ebay.
- Belt: Reproduction Los Amos Prince Adam belt from ebay.
- Energy bolts: the energy bolts from Funko Mortal Kombat Raiden, but doubled up for extra effect (two on each hand)

Paint on this one is minimal. I repainted the head, though you could limit that to a minor touch-up of the bottom of the head where you carved off the neckstump if you wanted. The painting to the neck and shoulders of the torso could also be omitted.

Ninja Origins - Dragon Clan Ninja with Dragon Claws

As part of my Origins expansion theme drawing from other 1980's influences, I noticed I had various asian themed parts in the "bits" box and what could be more '80s than to add a Ninja-themed subcollection? So far I have decided on not one, but three different ninja clans to populate that theme and have a couple members of each underway in various stages of completion. The first completed figure is one I'm rather happy with, which is a Dragon Clan Ninja equipped with Dragon Claws. Breakdown of parts used and modifications made after the pictures.

I'm well pleased with the way this one came out and I feel the claws work well on him. A small breakdown of parts used and modifications made:
- Claws, torso and arms from the Triple H that came with the ring. The white paint on the wrists was removed with acetone.
- Crotch, legs and boots from Roman Reigns. I resculpted the boot tips to have the split toe shape, but I don't feel it adds much, so won't bother for future ones
- Ninja vest from Classics Ninjor,
- Skirt from Funko Mumm-Ra. I had this leftover from my Funko-Bandai Classics mashup custom and once painted black, it worked wonderfully to balance out the extra girth of the Classics vest. I added some wear and tear to the fringe. Vest and skirt complement each other really well.
- Head from Funko Mortal Kombat Raiden, with sculpted ninja cowl added. The neckstump was carved out and the bottom of the head hollowed out to accept the Origins neck peg. A small O-ring was glued inside the head, so it sits snugly on the peg and can be posed.
The rest is paint, to blend in the different parts.

MotU Origins - Oo-Larr custom

While waiting patiently for the new Origins MotU range to come out in the fall, I've been itching to use the bodies I had from the Masters of the WWE Universe and some spare parts from my customs box to create some characters that aren't all that likely to get original figures and one such is Oo-Larr. This character is the original minicomic He-Man, before he became He-Man and before the Filmation cartoon changed his origin story.

I happened to have an incomplete Classics Oo-Larr I picked up cheap, missing the head and spear. I decided to steal its loincloth and bare feet. Classics feet are a bit big for Origins, but for this figure, they are just right enough to work.

I hollowed out the inside upper edge of the loincloth and shaved down one of the WWE crotch pieces, glued the new loincloth on to it and filled the gap with putty and then covered that with some brown paint. The loincloth is a bit wide, being made for Classics waists, but that actually works well for this figure, as it's a primitive rough fur thing. The main body is the Ultimate Warrior figure, for its bronzed skintone, with the chest tattoo removed and the shins are from the Cena figure, repainted along with the feet to match the rest of the body. I did make some minor changes to the insides of the feet to make them fit better on the Origins pegs and while it works well enough, it's still an imperfect solution. Regardless, they're not falling off if I don't provoke them, so there's that.

The Ultimate Warrior happened to come with Classics Oo-Larr's spear, molded in yellow, so I used that with a trim to shorten it and some paint. The head is a resin cast of the SDCC Origins He-Man head made by Ken Coleman. I may replace it with an actual one when He-Man comes out, but this one works just fine for now. I did convert an actual vintage head to fit the neck peg, but decided in the end the new head with the longer hair works better for Oo-Larr. I kept paint applications on the head and spear simple to stick to the toy look of the figures.

Thundercats Origins - Lion-O Custom

As it says in the title, this post features a custom Thundercats Lion-O figure, Origins style. I've seen some people add the head and weapons from a Mattel Classics Lion-O, and the belt from the Bandai figure to Origins bodies and while that works well enough, it's not the way I wanted to go. The Classics Thundercats figures are a bit expensive to raid for bits and I feel the heads are slightly too big, with a bit too much detail and shading for the simpler Origins toys. As a matter of taste, your mileage may vary of course.

In theory, the Funko Thundercats are exactly the Thundercat toys I wanted to be able to buy back in the day when I was a kid playing with my original MotU figures. And while I can understand and respect that people love them, I feel they are for the most part a bit chunky and crude, not as nice as some of the other knock offs done back in the day by the likes of Remco, Sungold or Olmec. So when Mattel announced the Origins line and their WWE crossover, the idea started to germ to use the Funko figures as cheapish custom fodder to steal all the unique bits and details from and add them to the new Origins style bodies. That way, I would finally have the unified MotU and Thundercats collection I dreamed of, that would all be part of the same range. Not having to go places in the weekend due to current events, I finally had some time to start on this. I will get a bit more into what parts were used further down, but let's start with some pictures of the finished figure first.

Origins Lion-O with his accessories (despite what I stated earlier, I ended up swapping out the oversized Funko sword for the more appropriately sized Classics one):

Some posing, with sword and claw:

So far for the eye candy. Since we're going to get a properly sized Mumm-Ra the Everliving Classics figure from Super7, my earlier custom Funko-Bandai mash-up I made for my Classics collection, will likely become my Origins Mumm-Ra. The size difference with Lion-O seems spot on:

I will post a few intermediate WIP shots below, to give you an idea of the various stages this went through. I started with disassembling the Funko figure to see what parts I could use. To my relief, the belt was a rubbery plastic pieces and not part of the hard plastic crotch, so that was going to make the job of converting it to a MotWWEU crotch much easier. I decided the Ultimate Warrior skintone was dark enough to work, so picked that as the base body. I went through the work to carve out the inside of the neck on the original head so it would fit over the Origins neck stump, but decided in the end that it looked too fat and too cartoony to use.

Having noticed the hair and face were 2 separate parts, I considered the possibility of using one of the spare WWE heads and decided the Cena head had the most facial traits in coming with Lion-O. So I proceeded to carve down the sides, top and back of the head and glue it inside the Lion-O wig. The gaps around the face were then filled in with putty and blended into the hair. The resulting head, once painted, would hopefully look like Lion-O instead of Cena in make-up and the added benefit was I had the required cavity for keeping the Origins neck articulation. A quick paint application seemed to indicate this would work reasonably well. Incidentally, I found Vallejo's Color System Panzer Aces "341 Flesh Base" is a perfect match for the skintone on the Ultimate Warrior figure. 

Having take care of the head, I would need to get to work on the chest piece. I initially considered making a press mould of the detail on the Funko torso, to transfer that to the Ultimate Warrior torso with greenstuff. The Funko body is a lot bigger and wider though, so I decided to go for broke and sculpt the armour edges and shoulderstraps myself. I did this in several stage, to avoid destroying the piece I sculpted on one side while doing the other one. It's not perfect, but with a coat of paint, it would do the job well enough. I hoped.

In between working on the torso, I also worked on the boots and crotch/belt. For the boots I used Triple H boots, because they have the middle flap sticking out on top. I cut that down to a triangle and used that as a base to blend in the curved angular top of Lion-O's bootfront. The laces were carved off and sanded as well. As for the belt, it was too wide of course, so I carved out the excess material in the center and removed a section from the side to shorten it before gluing it to the crotch piece. A bit of putty to fill the gaps and then it could be painted. At this stage, it all started to come together and with some preliminary base coats I was starting to think: yeah, this is going to work.

I did some other minor paintwork that I didn't take pictures of: the lighter colour on the hands and lower arms, picking out some details on the claw, I don't have intermediary pictures of that and anyway, you can see them on the finished figure. I did keep my paint applications simple, to stay in line with the simple Origins toy look. Only exceptions are a slight bit of shading along the nose and a wash on the hair as the Funko hair is a bit too smooth looking otherwise.

There you have it. This was a bit of a long winded post, but I figured I might as well write this down while I remembered it in case someone asks later. I will be doing the rest of the Thundercats figures as well, but I will likely wait on the release of wave 1 of MotU Origins as there are some body parts I'll want to scavenge from those.